Vestas Seeks Hundreds Of New Workers At Colorado Plants

Vestas is on the lookout to hire hundreds of new employees at its Colorado manufacturing plants. The announcement comes after the turbine maker, citing financial problems caused by 2012's production tax credit uncertainty, laid off workers at the facilities in February.

However, Vestas reports it has already boosted its headcount at a tower factory in Pueblo, Colo., this year and plans to bring additional workers onboard at three of its Colorado factories: the blade factory in Windsor, blade factory in Brighton and nacelle factory in Brighton.

In September, the company secured three major U.S. orders from Duke Energy (400 MW), RES Americas (60 MW) and EDF Renewable Energy (80 MW), in addition to announcing its first V110-2.0 MW turbine project with EDPR (400 MW).

To meet the growing demand and deliver its turbines on time, Vestas says it is recruiting now and expects to add hundreds of production workers in the first half of 2014.

Do the new hires signal renewed life for Vestas' U.S. operations? According to a company spokesperson, "We are not done with our two-year global turnaround especially, when it comes to profitability. However, we have very high demand for our products in the U.S. validated by major utilities and developers purchasing out turbines in 2013. We have the potential to secure 2.2 GW worth of turbine orders in the U.S. in the near term and are confident we'll announce more orders in the near future."

Despite the initiative to ramp up its U.S. plants, Vestas indicated in its third-quarter financial report that it remains committed to reducing its overall global workforce to 16,000 employees by year-end as part of its ongoing turnaround plan.